Most sellers spend the bulk of their time on eBay creating new listings. One way to save time is by creating Inserts. Inserts have several downsides though. You’re only allowed to create five and sometimes eBay doesn’t save them properly or they get deleted. For this reason, I suggest using a program called Texter to copy/paste text or html code that you’re likely to reuse in your listings or don’t want to retype over and over. Texter uses “hotstrings” you create and replaces them with whatever text you like. For example, in the Insert guide we created an Insert called “PayShip” to paste in payment and shipping terms into the listing. With Texter, you can create a “hotstring” that Texter will automatically replace with your payment and shipping terms. Here’s how to do it.

First, download and install the Texter program Texter. Choose to launch the application and the Texter icon will show up in your toolbar.

Double click the toolbar icon to bring up Texter Management. It should look like this.

Like with the Insert Tutorial, we are going to program a hotstring to paste our payment and shipping terms quickly into the listing description. To do this, edit an auction that has your payment and shipping terms included and delete everything but the terms. If you do not have your terms written out already, create a new listing and follow these instructions

Go to Texter Management by double clicking on the toolbar icon again if it isn’t up and click the plus button on the bottom left. In the hotstring box, type “payship” or anything else you think you’re more likely to remember. Then choose which trigger you want to make Texter replace the hotstring. After you type the hotstring followed by the trigger, Texter will replace the text as desired. The trigger exists in case you have a hotstring that you type but don’t want Texter to replace. For example, if you create a hotstring called “example” and don’t include a trigger, you might type “example” and actually want the word to remain rather than have Texter replace the word with the replacement text. For this reason, I recommend using a hotstring that you would never type and use a trigger of the space bar for convenience. That’s why I use “payship” for my payment and shipping terms. Since I’ll never type “payship” in a sentence, it’s safe to use.

Next, we need to enter the text that we want Texter to replace when you type the hotstring. Like with the Insert, you can do this two ways. The first is simply to enter text. Copy your shipping terms from your listing and paste them where it says “Enter your replacement text here…” (Be sure to delete that sentence. If you don’t it will show up as part of the replacement text). Texter will save the text and the spacing, but not any change in font, color, or size. To save that information, you will have to use the html code. If you are not familiar with how to do that, read about it at the end of my Insert guide Once you have your text copy/pasted into Texter, click “OK” and then “Save hotstring”

Now, you can type “payship” and follow it with a space and Texter will automatically paste in your text or html code. You can test it in Microsoft Word, Notepad, or within the eBay description creator. Just make sure if you are using html code that you type it in the html box in eBay rather than the “standard” box.

You can create a hotstring for just about anything you want and it works great outside of eBay too. You can create one to automatically paste your name, email, or anything else. It’s a handy application. Read more about it along with around 600 comments at Lifehacker